Is She an Eishet Halakhah

In a few weeks, the smallnumber of halakhic works that have been written by women will be increased by one when a new book on halakhah by Malka Puterkovsky will be published.

During the past few weeks an interesting discussion has been going on about what title should be used for Puterkovsky. Is she a rabbanit? An eishet halakhah? The discussion surrounding how she should be described on her Wikipedia page has left the confines of Wikipedia. There has been discussion on social networks, an article (Hebrew) on a popular Israeli Internet site for the religious public, and now there has been a discussion about it on Israel Radio. The radio spot can be listened to below: (Hebrew)

In addition, last year Puterkovsky was interviewed on a popular Israeli radio program and that interesting interview (Hebrew) can be found below:

I have addressed the issue of titles used for women in the Israeli Orthodox community here, and it will be interesting to see how this discussion continues.

One Response to “Is She an Eishet Halakhah”

1

DF:
August 25th, 2014 at 1:23 pm

Well, as you know, I don’t care for the concept of “women halachists”, but for those who do (like your good self, MM) I sure hope this books tackles universal halachic issues in orach chaim, yoreh deah, and choshen Mishpat. One big problem I’ve seen of the advocates for women’s learning is that nearly always (or always, so far as I’ve seen) all they discuss focuses on women’s “sugyot”. I cant evaluate what type of contribution she made, but to the extent Nechama Leibowtiz made any contribution to women’s learning, she did it PRECISLY because she scrupulously avoided confrontational or controversial topics, and focused on the bread and butter bible.

Just so. If some woman ever came out with a book of chiddushim on shas, it would do infinitely more than a hundred books featuring collections of articles on Jewish topics written by women.